The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

I have extracted three pages from Maulana Muhammad Ali’s booklet Instructions and Guidance for Members of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Jama`at, and have marked by a red line the instructions relating to donations.

Here is the link.

I also refer to his letter to the Jama`at at this link, in which he writes:

“7. Encourage your children right from the start to give money for the propagation of Islam every month, no matter how small an amount, and have their names entered in the lists of regular contributors. In this way you will sow in their hearts from an early age the seeds of passion for the propagation of Islam, which will develop into a strong tree when they are grown up.

10. Find out if your adult, financially independent offspring (for instance, your sons who earn their own income or your daughters who are married) give the monthly donation to the Jama‘at, subscribe to the periodicals of the Jama‘at, …”

A large number of members make regular, monthly contributions, and many have bequeathed substantial sums in their wills. Our elders donated their properties and land to the Anjuman.

Our system complies with the following instructions of the Promised Messiah given in his Will:

“For this purpose, there should be an Anjuman entrusted to spend, as it determines fit, the funds thus collected from time to time, on proclaiming the teachings of Islam and spreading the message of the oneness of God.”

“9. The Anjuman, which is to hold these funds, shall not be authorised to spend the monies for any purpose except the objectives of the Ahmadiyya Movement, and among these objectives the propagation of Islam shall have the highest priority.”

The extract below is from the biography of Maulana Muhammad Ali:

“Appeal to make Wills
Among the major plans that Maulana Muhammad Ali put before the Jama‘at to carry into action, one was the making of wills which he initiated at the annual gathering of 1936. He said that while we had embraced the Promised Messiah’s Al-Wasiyyat in the ideological sense, we had paid little attention to putting it into practice. One objective of Al-Wasiyyat was that just as we spend some of our money in the service of the faith during our lifetime, similarly after our death some of our property and money should go to the same cause. The Promised Messiah’s exhortation for making wills was not for the purpose of getting a plot in the Bahishti Maqbara of Qadian. To think in that way would be just to take his words literally. God’s paradise is very extensive, and the Promised Messiah instructed in Al-Wasiyyat that to inherit that Garden one must continue the striving to serve the faith even after death. Maulana Muhammad Ali further said that the Holy Quran has made it obligatory for everyone leaving behind any money or property to make a bequest, and what is meant is a bequest for charitable and religious endowments, and not for near and dear ones. According to the Shariah a maximum of one-third of one’s wealth can be willed for such purposes. The Promised Messiah instructed that at least one tenth should be willed, and he expressed his desire that the funds so collected should be spent on the propagation of Islam and spreading translations of the Holy Quran in different languages of the world.

From 1936 onwards the campaign to urge the making of wills continued every year and members of the Jama‘at took part in it. On the occasion of the silver jubilee of the Anjuman a large part of the jubilee fund was raised by this means.”

“From October till the annual gathering of December 1939 Maulana Muhammad Ali continuously toured the outside branches of the Jama‘at, visiting in addition to other cities Delhi and Quetta. A particular purpose he had in view in these visits was to organise the monthly subscriptions, so that every member should pay his dues according to the rate fixed by the Anjuman. He kept stressing this point in his Friday khutbas also during this entire period.”

It should be remembered that the urging of donations and chanda upon his followers by Hazrat Mirza sahib for the service of Islam is only in obedience to the injunctions of the Holy Quran to Muslims to strive hard in the way of Allah with their wealth and possessions. It is in no sense a novel institution invented by him.

In early Islam Muslims made tremendous financial sacrifices for the cause of Islam, the stories about which are commonly related by Muslims. Hazrat Mirza sahib told his followers that the sacrifices required of them are much lighter than those of early Muslims, as they had to risk their lives in battles, which we don’t have to do.